With the wins stacking up, covering the entirety of February and now a dozen high, the new goal apparently has become variety.

For three weeks, the Rockets had games in which the defense dominated for all or parts of games.

That worked without interruption, but the offense had begun to grow, too. So when the Chicago Bulls came in, pushed the Rockets with an aggressive, overplaying defense, the Rockets stepped back a bit for a half, then let their offense blow the game open in the second half, rolling to a 110-97 win on Sunday night before 18,275 at Toyota Center.

"Right now, we're playing with such a great deal of confidence, we got it rolling," Tracy McGrady said after scoring 16 of his 24 points in the second half. "Defensively, offensively tonight, we're playing way above our heads right now.

"We're getting good. The most important thing, we believe in ourselves. We play together, a very unselfish team, we're having fun man. Everybody's locked in.

"We believe we can dominate offensively of defensively."

With the Bulls overplaying and pressuring defensively, the Rockets attacked and found scoring wherever they looked. For just the second time this season, they had seven players score in double figures, just as they had in their other game against the Bulls. But this one was different.

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This time, the Rockets got a huge lift from Bobby Jackson, playing in his first day since he was acquired Thursday and with just one shootaround of preparation.

Jackson, however, had five years running coach Rick Adelman's offense in Sacramento. So when the Bulls pressured defensively, he shot past them the way the Kings had for so long.

"The timing for (acquiring) Bobby Jackson couldn't be better," Shane Battier said. "He showed us how to run the corner offense. Especially when a team is pressuring you, he made so many backcuts. For me, I've been running the offense all year, but to watch him run it, it was 'Oh, yeah, that's how you're supposed to do it.' The timing was impeccable for him to come in tonight against a team that pressures."

In his first moments on the floor, Jackson took off on a backcut to take a Carl Landry pass to a layup. When he was through, he had played 19 minutes, made 5 of 8 shots and scored 14 points. The adjustment period was over before there was time to hang his name above his locker.

"It's so funny," Jackson said. "I was telling the big guys the way they were overplaying us all night, the backdoor is going to be open. When teams try to overplay us and take our pick-and-rolls away, the backdoor is open all night. They just have to hit the bounce pass. This is everybody's first year in (the offense). It's my fifth year in it. If we get the backdoor, teams are going to play us very differently.

"I was in Sacramento five years, but it took us a couple years to get it down."

Soon, the Rockets were all moving, with McGrady, who made all four of his shots in the fourth quarter and getting four assists, making backcuts and looking to drive regularly.

In the first 8 1/2 minutes of the fourth quarter, when the Rockets went from an eight-point lead and blew it open to 107-88, they made 12 of 16 shots, including 5 of 7 3-pointers. They capped their run with McGrady hitting a jumper, Battier putting in consecutive 3s, and Jackson hitting a 3 in the corner.

With that, Adelman saw the offense he had envisioned, and perhaps the next step of the Rockets' growth through the winning streak.

"We attacked," Adelman said. 'Tracy did a great job in the second half attacking the basket. He just took it at them, and if he didn't have the shot, he found people open. Tracy set the tone the second half, but attacking was a huge part of it."

That was enough to get Adelman going again, with his Sacramento offense much of which that had been shelved seeming possible again.

"You have to move the ball," Adelman said. "You have to make cuts. Like Tracy made a great cut where he made a backcut and Rafer (Alston) is standing all by himself for a 3. Those type of cuts, you may not get the play, but somebody else is going to do it.

"It's not about who scores, it's about us scoring."

This time, that's what the Rockets did. When the game was tight, when the Bulls made runs, when the Rockets began to pull away, they were scoring. And the winning streak had a new variety of win.

• • •

Super streak

The Rockets' 12th straight victory Sunday marked the fourth-longest winning streak in team history. The hottest Rockets teams and how they finished:

Current record: 36-20 (fourth in Southwest Division). Notable: The streak started Jan. 29 with a 111-107 home win over Golden State, and the Rockets have jumped three places in the conference standings since then.